Experiments

In recent and refreshing conversation with Phil, he brought up renewed enthusiasm and ideas for the AACC. Describing experiments, he outlined broad ideas to make our pursuits more active and creative as opposed to responding to existing writings and ideas. Largely focused on devising hypotheses, and then implementing experiments to determine accuracy and validity, we seek to create and ongoing series of activities and conversations to learn more about interactions with space and cityscapes and spatial influences on behavior. As Phil pointed out the scope of ideas and realities this may cover is quite broad, so perhaps the best place to start is here and now, with a brainstorming thread.

During the conversation I was reminded of interventions we devised and executed during our European Urban Design Theory course in Copenhagen. Completed while studying the Situationists and derivé, we all selected a public space in the city and, alone or in a group, set up or created a situation and documented reaction to it. Interesting and fun at the time, it still holds great value as a starting place to simple ways to study public space and behavior.

-Interventions designed to learn specific traits of space and populace that may be applied to other sites and situations.
-Uses of, and reactions to, new technologies, particularly mobile technology, social media and image, film and artificial constructions